Orbit
by Schuyler Lola
Summary: This is a companion piece to Starry, Starry Night. Larry's thoughts up in space.


**Disclaimer:** Okay. Get it now?

**A/N: **This is kind of a companion piece to my one-shot _Starry, Starry Night_. This is Larry's view while he's up on the ISS, looking back down at Earth. I don't know about this one – it was kind of hard to get in Larry's head.

Orbit

There was nothing more miraculous than being up in space, in the vast unknown, living a dream long cherished. It's not everyday that you were able to achieve something so improbable; in fact, he knew where he could get the exact percentage, since he himself did not care to work it out. However, the extraordinary mind of Charlie Eppes was currently far beyond his grasp right now.

Charles and his friendship was one of the many things currently out of reach now. He wondered distantly if he would be able to catch up on six months' worth of news, cases and developments. In the group of professors, civilians and FBI agents he considered his family; news went at a speed unable to be calculated by thought and simple instruments alone. They flew along life at a disastrous speed, oftentimes not stopping for food or for sleep. Larry could come up with numerous times that he had gone to the FBI office to discuss his many theorems with Charlie, who was hiding out in the cavernous war room, and found that they were all on caffeine highs, with take out containers lying on tables next to classified documents.

The beauty of space was overwhelming. One could not imagine it if they hadn't been there. Even the pictures he had viewed from telescopes and the paintings that had been created of glorious, imagined scenes from space couldn't capture the wild beauty that the universe contained. There was nothing more pleasing, then in his few moments of relaxation time, watching the deep blue-black of the world outside the station, the lazy stars shining in the distances, the glimmer of far-off planets…the cloudy surface of Earth, seemingly not so far away, but really, a hazy image at this point.

He would be going home in a few months. They had already been here for a while, although, when he wasn't working, Larry had no idea what day it was or what time it was. Although, in space, there was no real concept if time, so he let that one go. But it still seemed to him, that as soon as a person was in the midst of something they wanted, they wanted it out. It was simple human nature, and Larry understood this as well as he could with his limited knowledge of the human psyche.

Megan would've had an answer for him, to the best of her ability. She would've explained to him what she knew from all of the psychology courses and the work and people she dealt with everyday. He tucked yet another thought away in the inner cavities of his mind, knowing that when he did see her again, they wouldn't talk about all of the things he had thought about asking her. They would talk about them, about her work, and his work, what had happened in his absence, what might happen in their future.

_Them_. For all of Larry's intelligence, and yearning for other knowledge outside of his mind, all the research and analysis wouldn't tell him why a stunning FBI agent with wits and looks had agreed to take that lunch with him, and continued to occupy his every thought, subconscious and otherwise.

Yet she had smiled, said her yes with something that could be constructed as real joy, and a smile that lit up her tired face. After that, talking to Megan became easier, until he decided to take the plunge and ask her for dinner. That night…she had _glowed_. Luck had nothing to with it, nor the fact that she was having a good complexion day. She was delighted, excited, and happy to be there with him, enjoying a gourmet meal and conversation.

It had built from there – a relationship that warmed every heartbeat that he had, and made his days even more enjoyable. Megan had been a pillar when he told her of his upcoming journey and did her best to make sure that he wouldn't remember her miserable when he left. She had exclaimed her pride in him, spent all of the extra time she had to spare with him, and presented the world with her usual stoicism. Larry wasn't at all sure if he could ever make up what she had done for him in his last few weeks, but he would do his best, starting with when he arrived back in Los Angeles. She was fiercely important to him, so much so that one of the items that might've teetered his decision in going up into orbit was the thought of leaving her to plod through an everyday life, solving cases, putting her life on the line, going home to her lonely apartment. There was something sadly poetic in that and it made him miss her more than ever. He had seen the inside of her fridge. It wasn't anything anyone should be going home to after a long day.

He had asked the Eppes to look out for her. Knowing Megan, as he did, he knew that she would be in a state of denial when it came to her own welfare. It must be something about FBI agents: they all liked to overwork.

His feelings for her were so much deeper than the image they gave the rest of their crew. To them, they were dating seriously, yes, but for Larry, she was perhaps more important than his own life. His anxiety during her kidnapping had been but a glimpse of his later feelings.

On days like these, he wondered about all of them. Alan, Don, Amita, Charlie, Colby, David, Megan. They had said their good-byes with hope, with excitement, with sadness.

They were his foundation.

On days like these, he missed his earthly life more than ever.


End file.
